Various - Dekmantel 10 Years 07

Various - Dekmantel 10 Years 07
In this age of cultural superabundance, listeners often turn to labels for guidance. Dekmantel don't seem interested in this role as strict curatorial filter. Instead they favour more-is-more, as demonstrated by the label's tenth birthday series: ten 12-inches released over a year, featuring artists as diverse as Call Super, Egyptian Lover and Gigi Masin. Connections between those featured are often hard to decipher, but the seventh instalment is an exception, uniting diverse producers in strange psychedelia.

Frenchmen of different generations open and close the EP. Voiski's "Time As A River" is a curious beast. The twilit techno pulse suggests one mood but the Italo arps deliver another, and a four-note melody is mixed piercingly bright, like the audio equivalent of a laser pointer to the retina. Versatile's Gilb'R explores subtler contrasts, uniting all manner of muted sounds—hand drums, flute, freaky oscillator sweeps—over the 105-BPM throb of "The Triangle." "Crash," by Tolouse Low Trax, resonates nicely with both tracks. The weighty slow-mo groove matches Gilb'R—the Salon resident is, after all, the master of the leftfield chug—and the ambiguity in its competing synth parts echoes Voiski. Randomer offers some contrast to set the palate tingling. He can't quite expunge ruffneck UK swing from "Foghorn," whose grainy drums frame bleak, blaring melody.